


To Drink Honey with Your Lips

by keerawa



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Character Study, Double Agents, F/F, Femslash Festivus, Fix-It, Identity, Misses Clause Challenge, Past Relationship(s), Spies & Secret Agents, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 08:56:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17118278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/pseuds/keerawa
Summary: Lorraine thought sleeping with Delphine Lasalle was an acceptable risk. She was wrong.





	To Drink Honey with Your Lips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fresne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/gifts).



Delphine Lasalle tasted like Stoli, lipstick, the blood from an unhealed cut on the inside of Lorraine’s lip, and something oddly, addictively sweet. Even after Lorraine pulled Delphine’s own gun and threatened her with it, Delphine was still leaning forward, pupils dilated, hungry for more.

Lorraine thought, _It’d be useful to find out what the French know about The List._  
Lorraine thought, _That girl’s fucking hot._  
Lorraine thought, _It’s an acceptable risk._

It wasn’t.

Delphine was nothing like James. With James every fuck had been a battle to see who’d end up on top. Delphine liked to be held down, held back, made to beg for release.

Lorraine obliged. She’d been trained to respond to a mark’s subconscious cues, to give them what they wanted, take whatever they offered, and leave them with a smile on their face. With some, like Bremovych, it was a test of endurance. But with Delphine it was a pleasure, an honest pleasure, shoving her down on the bed and tasting those perfect nipples, pushing her fingers inside her, grinding the mound of her palm up against Delphine’s clit while she mewled and writhed and begged.

Controlling Delphine’s head and pushing it down where Lorraine wanted it, that sweet, hot tongue lapping at her like she was trying to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

Later, exhausted but still wanting, exchanging long drugging kisses, rocking against each other, hands grasping, thighs slick with sweat and their own juices, until they arched to a long, shaking climax.

So, really, nothing at all like James.

James had been a consummate professional at the top of his game. She wouldn’t have wanted to go up against him, and hadn’t dared let her guard down around him, not for a second. Delphine was a babe in the woods when it came to the game. She belonged in some SigInt position back in Paris, not in the field, especially a nest of vipers like Berlin. Lorraine told her, right to her face, that their relationship wasn’t real. Delphine smiled and told her she looked different when she told the truth. Lorraine wanted to slap whoever had trained her. Or, more to the point, go back in time and shoot the son of a bitch in the head before he assigned Delphine to this station.

Delphine knew one of Percival’s secrets. She tried to tell Lorraine about it right out in the open, out loud in their bed where anyone could be listening in. She was a threat to Percival, and that was a problem.

Lorraine had seen that photo of James with Percival. She’d read their body language. She could see they were closer than colleagues, close in ways that meant Percival’s dark file was much thinner than it ought to be. On one level that was good – Lorraine wanted Bakhin put down for killing James; it couldn’t be her top priority, but it was likely Percival’s. But for Delphine, it was bad news.

James Gascoigne had a type. There was a joke among those in the game that if you wanted to know the top agents in Europe, all you’d need was a look at Gascoigne’s little black book. He’d lost a civilian lover to a car bomb in Lebanon, and ever since then he liked them clever, careful, and even more dangerous than he was.

Lorraine knew what she’d done to protect her secrets. Their bodies hung round her neck like a flock of albatrosses. She knew Percival would be willing to do anything it took to meet his goals. Only, Percival was so far off the reservation, she couldn’t predict what those goals might be. At this point, she wasn’t sure he knew, either. Delphine’s only chance was to get out of Berlin, pronto.

Lorraine thought, _She’s dead already._  
Lorraine thought, _I can’t lose another person. Not Delphine. I have to save her._  
Lorraine thought, _What am I willing to sacrifice to save her?_

It wasn’t impossible. In Lorraine’s experience, nothing was impossible. The training that set field agents apart from the rest of humanity allowed them to go beyond the limits that others accepted as immutable. They could hold their breath for longer. Draw on adrenaline to keep fighting through pain and injuries. Run up the down escalator. Use their teeth to bite off chunks of an enemy’s flesh. Go for a man’s balls, a pregnant woman’s stomach. View anything, literally anything, from a car to a corkscrew to an infant, as the deadly weapon it could be in the right circumstances.

So saving Delphine’s life wouldn’t be impossible. Just very bloody difficult. Percival had contacts all over Berlin, and throughout the intelligence community all over Western Europe. It would take serious juice to put her off-limits. MI6 wouldn’t be interested in protecting a French officer from one of their own station chiefs. Kurzfeld had essentially told her that, as far as the United States was concerned, Delphine was a cunt hair away from an extra-judicial execution order. Which made Lorraine wonder if Langley was protecting her, as a valued asset, or if Percival was working for them as well. That only left one big dog that might get Delphine out of Berlin and keep her safe – the Russians.

Would Delphine baulk if Lorraine asked her to switch sides? That was always the most delicate moment in any honeypot operation. Lorraine remembered Delphine, fearful she was in over her head, shivering and malleable in her arms, and thought not.

Lorraine slipped out of bed in the grey, pre-dawn light. She dressed warmly in a wool hat and a plain coat designed to hide her curves, one that might belong to a young woman on her way to work.

Her CIA handler had been worried that, in the long-term, Lorraine might have trouble keeping her various cover identities straight. That she might lose herself undercover. Lorraine had never had any trouble with that. All of those identities were her, different versions of her. A man might respond to Daddy at home, waiter at work, Corporal Stevens during his National Guard weekends. He would be a different man in each of those contexts. What Lorraine did was just a little more extreme. There was a set of consistent principles and priorities, though, and if she was going to change those priorities, she needed to be certain it was worth it.

Lorraine found a café where she could sit with her back to a wall. The menu was sparse, missing the _kasha_ porridge she found herself craving, but she ordered a hearty breakfast of coffee, _Brötchen_ bread, and sausages. She ate slowly, giving herself that much time to come to a decision.

The Soviet Union was no paradise for homosexuals, but if she asked for their help, they would jump at the chance. A solid piece of _kompromat_ like a secret, endangered lesbian lover would be very comforting to Comrade Satchel’s masters in Lubyanka Square. And Lorraine would have taken one giant step away from the delicate balance point that kept her life from spinning out of control. What would she lose if it all fell apart, and she landed in the Soviet Union with Delphine?

Lorraine thought, _I’d never see my parents again. I should probably care about that._  
Lorraine thought _, No more bringing lovers back to that nice big London flat.  
_Lorraine thought, _If I owed the US government any debt, I paid it off long ago._

Lorraine felt the ties holding her to those other lives, those other selves, evaporating away. Delphine had to survive. That was Lorraine’s absolute requirement — one that could not be compromised by any operational constraint.

With her new priorities established, everything else was a simple matter of tactics and logistics. The List was a danger to her, and to Delphine, now more than ever. Lorraine would make sure it was destroyed. Percival was a threat. She found herself looking forward to dealing with him in a way that strengthened her position. After all, it is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver. Lorraine took one last bite of her sausage, bussed her table, and put on her coat. Then she walked out of the cafe onto the bitter cold streets of West Berlin, feeling more free, and more herself, than she had in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Morbane for the beta, and to fresne for reminding me of how much I love this movie!  
> In Russian, the proverb Вашими уста́ми, да мёд пить, 'I'd like to drink honey with your lips,' means that something is too good to be true.


End file.
